Alone.Yes,that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.

Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.

The eyes were damned, the staring, glaring eyes of one who sees but does not see, eyes ever turned inward to the sterile hell of dreams beyond control, dreams unleashed, risen out of the stinking swamps of the unconscious.

You laugh because what's fearful and unknown is also what's funny, you laugh the way a small child will sometimes laugh and cry at the same time when a capering circus clown approaches, knowing it is supposed to be funny... But it is also unknown, full of the unknown's eternal power.

But there are weak men who can lift cars if their wives are pinned underneath. The brain, Garraty.' McVries's voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. 'It isn’t man or God. It’s something...In the brain.

And in real life endings aren't always neat, whether they're happy endings, or whether they're sad endings.